• Journal of Christian Education in Korea
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• v.64
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• pp.145-171
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• 2020

Christian communities have long sought to find what type of moral judgment is appropriate and what the Christian behavior is, by taking the church's ethical norms and behavior patterns as objects of reflection. In the same context, Christian education also tried to base the psychological rationalism of J. Piaget and L. Kohlberg, but the reason-centered structural development theory was not the answer. In fact, the structural development theory, which emphasized autonomy while excluding emotions from the moral judgment process, over-emphasizing cognition or reason, eventually led to moral relativism, unlike what was intended. In addition, it was criticized for not being able to adequately elucidate the gap between human moral reasoning and behavior, and for attempting to interpret morality excessively within the context of social culture. Recently, these limitations of structural developmental theory have been reinterpreted by neuroethics, especially moral psychology theories, which claim that moral judgment ability is physically wired in the brain and relies heavily on networks between cortical and limbic system. The purpose of this paper is to review some of the newly emerged research themes of neuroethics, and then to discuss two main theories that explain morality in the perspective of neuroethics and the implications that Christian education should pay attention to.